Part 35 (1/2)

Two thousand feet up in the air we sat and spoke in quiet voices of the horror that was past and the horror that threatened us. Far down below, London was waking up to a night of pleasure. People were dressing for dinners and the theater, thousands upon thousands of toilers had left their work and were about to enjoy the hours of rest and recreation. And not a soul, probably, among all those millions that crawled like ants at our feet had the least suspicion of what was going on in our high place.

They were accustomed to the great towers now. The sensation of their building was over and done, there were no more thrills. If they had only known!

I was not aware if strata of clouds hid us from the world below, as so often happened; but if the night were clear I do remember thinking that any one who cast their eyes up into the sky might well notice an unusual brilliancy in the pleasure city of the millionaire, that mysterious theater of the unknown, which dominated the greatest city in the world.

... ”Well, Tom,” said Mr. Morse, ”Pu-Yi tells me that you are now acquainted with all the facts. The question we have to decide is, what are we to do?”

He turned to Juanita, and nodded. She left the room.

”The situation, as I understand it,” I replied, ”is that Midwinter”--I had a curious reluctance in p.r.o.nouncing the name aloud--”is either concealed here in the City or has made his escape. If he is here, we shall know before to-morrow morning, shall we not?”

”Precisely. I have spent the last hour in going over the plans of the City with the chiefs of the staff. We have divided up the two stages into small sections, and even while I am talking to you the search has begun. The orders are to shoot at sight, to kill that man with less compunction than one would kill a mad dog. If he is really here, he cannot possibly escape.”

”Very well, then,” I said, ”let us turn our attention to the other possibility. a.s.suming that he has got away, I think we may safely say that the danger is very much lessened.”

”While we remain here in the City--yes,” Morse agreed.

”And you are determined to do that?”

He took the cigar he had been smoking from his lips, and his hand shook a little. ”Think what you like of me,” he said, ”but remember that there is Juanita. I say to you, Kirby, that if I never descend to the world again alive, I must stay here until Mark Antony Midwinter is dead.”

Well, I had already made up my mind on this point. ”I think you are quite right,” I told him. ”Still, he will not make a second appearance in the City. You can treble your precautions. He must be attacked down in the world.”

Then a thought struck me for the first time. ”But how,” I said, ”did he and Zorilla ever come here in the first instance? Treachery among the staff? It is the only explanation.”

Pu-Yi shook his head. ”You may put that out of your mind, Sir Thomas,”

he said. ”That is my department. I know what you cannot know about my chosen compatriots.”

”But the man isn't a specter! He's a devil incarnate, but there's nothing supernatural about him.”

Then little Rolston spoke. ”I've been down below all day,” he said, ”and though I haven't discovered anything of Midwinter, I am certain of how he and Zorilla got here.”

We all turned to him with startled faces.

”Do you remember, Sir Thomas,” he said, ”that, shortly after your arrival, when you were looking down upon London from one of the galleries, there was a big fair in Richmond Park?”

I remembered, and said so.

”Among the other attractions, there was a captive balloon--”

Morse brought his hand heavily down upon the table with a loud exclamation in Spanish.

”Yes, there was, but--but it was quite half a mile away and never came up anything like our height here.”

”No,” the boy answered, ”not at that time. But do you remember how during the fog last night I told you I had seen something, or thought I had seen something, like a group of statuary falling before my bedroom window?”

Something seemed to snap in my mind. ”Good heavens! And I thought it was merely a trick of the mist! Nothing was discovered?”

”No, but in view of what happened afterwards, I formed a theory. I put it to the test this morning. I made a few inquiries as to the proprietors of the captive balloon and the engine which wound it up and down by means of a steel cable on a drum. I need not go into details at the moment, but the whole apparatus did not leave Richmond Park when it was supposed to do so. The wind was drifting in the right direction, the balloon could be more or less controlled--certainly as to height. I have learned that there was a telephone from the car down to the ground.

Desperate men, resolved to stick at nothing, might well have arranged for the balloon to rise above the City--the cable was quite long enough for that--and descend upon part of it by means of a parachute, or, if not that, a hanging rope. More dangerous feats than that have been done in the air and are upon record. It seems to me there is no doubt whatever that this is the way the two men broke through all our precautions.”